10 llli1 """'--- o MARCH 3. 1980 lectures pay nicely, given the vicissitudes of the theatre I'm told W. H. Auden used to go out and do thirty readings in thirty days. That could be a rat race. I never do that." "What do you do in your workshops?" we asked. "Discussions. Scenes. How at the age of twenty they fig- ure out how to get in to the mind of a fifty-five-year-old person. How to learn to dif- ferentiate between characters Things like that. It's very easy when you're very young to fancy you're a writer. I read their plays. You end up read- ing a hundred plays, and if you're lucky you'll find some- '1f(ó one to encourage." "What generosity! " we said. "It's responsibility," Albee . d " y , sal. ou ve got to encour- age talent. It's an obligati.on. ThIs last tour was wonderful. But I didn't know when I left that it would coincide with the closing of the play. The critics." He gave a small smile. "The critical re- sponse to the creative act." He shook his head. "People think the critics are giving facts, not opinions," he said. "We had ten favorable reviews and ten unfavorable reviews, but the economics of the theatre are such that you can't keep plays open with mixed reviews. And it's becoming harder and harder for a serious play to get produced. In 1962, It took seventy-five thousand dol- lars to produce 'Who's Afraid of Vir- ginia Woolf?' This year, 'The Lady from Dubuque' required three hun- dred thousand dollars to produce. I know my plays. I know my chances. Every single play of mine has had mixed reviews. Right down the middle. Walter Kerr said about 'Virginia Woolf' that it had a 'hole in its head.' The News said it was 'dirty.' Back in the old days, what the critics said would hurt. Now I know that you can't permit yourself to let it destroy you. Or even hurt you. After having eighteen plays produced, I've learned a few things. One, never expect anything but disaster. Two, there's not neces- sarily any relation between what you've done and what the critics say. Three, the ultimate judgment of your work probably won't be made for seventy- five years, and unless you're exception- ally lucky you're not going to find out how it comes out. The producers of "T'he Lady from Dubuque' -there were seven of them, including Richard ---:::. ill \] \ "Alzssus couldn't make zt. She sent me." Oregon, and then two days in Seattle, one of them resting and one at the Northwest Theatre Conference. The week before, I flew out to Kalama- zoo to talk to students. I do between twenty and thirty appearances a year, all around the country. Over the years, I've become less awkward and less shy. I used to be taciturn. Now you can't h " get me to s ut up. "What, exactly, do YOll do out there?" we asked. "And why?'" "I do a lecture or a reading from my plays, with a question-and-answer period," he said. "I also do two work- shops, one with students of acting or directing and one with students of cre- ative writing. I talk a lot about the re- lationship between what drama tries to do and what people want you to do. I fly in and rent a car, because I love to drive around and get to know the country. And I love to walk around a town or a campus until it's time for me to go where I'm supposed to go. This last time out, I read from 'The Zoo Story,' 'A Delicate Balance,' and 'Counting the Ways,' and read one entire short play, 'Box.' Most of my characters are fond of the sound of their own voices." He grinned, and dug into his fruit and cottage cheese. "The workshops are limited to fifty stu- dents," he said. "Someone or some- thing worthwhile in variably turns up in those. At the start, I have to get over the three impossible questions, of course: 'How do you wrIte?' and 'Why do you . . write? ' and 'Where do your ideas f "I' " come rom r "And your answers?" we asked. "To the first, I say 'It's SDmething you know if you're a writer,' " Albee replied politely . "To the second, 'You write because you're a writer.' To the third, I usually say 'Schenectady.' I've been going out to the universities for fifteen years. I find it fascinating to see the changes in the students from the activist days to these, the ostrich days. They all want to get a good job and vanish. They don't believe that politi- cal participation makes any sense. They feel they can't do anything to make de- mocracy work. I like talking to them because-in theory, at least-people of that age have not completely made up their minds, so maybe I can get at them. I don't like living in a vacuum. I believe there's a strong relationship be- tween people's being aesthetically in- formed and their being able to govern themselves. " "Any other reasons for going?" we asked. "Yes-I always learn something," Albee said. "Somebody asks me a ques- tion, and I hear myself giving an an- swer, and I suddenly find out some- thing I'd never realized before. For example, one student said to me, 'Your characters never have last names. Why?' I said, 'I'd have given them last names if I knew what they were.' It was something I hadn't realized be- fore. Also, I love travelling. And the